David Cameron must fill the leadership vacuum left by Barack Obama

David Cameron must reject the folly of the Obama doctrine and follow the
example of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, writes
Nile Gardiner.

With every major poll pointing to a Conservative victory at the next election, it is highly likely that David Cameron, and not Gordon Brown, will represent British interests on the world stage in eight months’ time. However, as Cameron prepares for power he would do well to look across the Atlantic for a lesson in how not to lead in international affairs.

The Tory leader, like the mayor of London, is unashamedly an admirer of Barack Obama, whom he has described as “incredibly impressive”. It is natural that the relatively youthful and charismatic Cameron seeks to emulate Obama’s electoral success and winning message of “change”. But he must not let his personal enthusiasm for the US president blind him to his considerable failures as a world leader since taking office in January.

Barack Obama’s central failing in foreign policy has been his striking hesitation to project American global power and leadership, which in the eyes of America’s enemies and competitors translates as weakness and vulnerability. He has sacrificed US strength and influence on the altar of international popularity, as though the world were an extension of the stage of American Idol, and not a hugely dangerous place where the United States remains hated and reviled by those who seek its demise.

President Obama has gone out of his way to apologise for his country’s past at almost every opportunity on foreign soil, from Cairo to Prague to Strasbourg. The result has been the humiliation of the United States, and the growing perception of the president as an extremely naïve commander in chief who appears to be sacrificing the national interest to appease international opinion. Obama’s spectacularly awful address last month to the United Nations was rightly met with widespread derision in the US, and was embarrassingly followed by Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi’s admiring call for Obama “to stay forever as the president.”

Barack Obama has also shown a marked willingness to undermine US national sovereignty, with clear signs that he supports an array of supranational UN treaties and conventions, ranging from Law of the Sea to the Treaty of Rome, the statute that established the International Criminal Court. His administration cares little for British sovereignty either, enthusiastically backing further political, military and economic integration in Europe.

In every area, the Obama strategy is undermining American power. The White House’s hugely controversial strategy of engagement with rogue regimes has backfired spectacularly, with Iran and North Korea responding with even greater threats and aggression. Even the French now think Obama is weak in the face of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the menacing Mullahs of Tehran.

While currying favour with America’s enemies and cutting defence spending, Barack Obama has paid scant attention to maintaining or strengthening America’s key alliances, including NATO and the Anglo-American Special Relationship. His recent shameful surrender to Moscow over the installation of Third Site missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic was viewed as an appalling betrayal by key US allies in eastern and central Europe.

It is vital that, as Prime Minister, Mr Cameron is prepared to enhance British power on the world stage, rather than weaken it, as Gordon Brown has consistently done. He should take a fundamentally different approach to that of Barack Obama, based upon an aggressively confident projection of British power, the defence of British sovereignty in Europe, increased spending on the Armed Forces, and the strengthening of transatlantic alliances.

Great Britain may no longer be a superpower, but it remains a world force and a powerful global player, despite the best efforts of the Labour government to gut the military and turn the UK into a province of Brussels. The Conservatives must look beyond the shores of Europe with a forward-looking foreign policy that projects global interests.

The world’s fifth biggest nuclear power, the UK is second only to the United States in terms of conventional military force projection and the ability to deploy thousands of troops on the far side of the world, with greater strategic reach than either China or Russia. The UK has the second largest deployment in Afghanistan, with almost as many personnel deployed as all other major European Union countries combined.

Britain is also a global economic powerhouse, with the City of London continuing to dominate as the world’s biggest financial centre, and UK foreign direct investment (FDI) sitting at number two in world rankings. With a rapidly rising population, the UK is on course to overtake Germany as the most populous country in Western Europe by 2060, with a population of over 75 million.

There is little doubt that David Cameron will seek a close partnership with his US counterpart if he enters Downing Street. This will be good for Britain and the Special Relationship. He must, though, avoid following the Obama foreign policy model, and demonstrate strong British leadership on key issues such as the Iranian nuclear crisis, the war in south Asia, and the fight against Islamist terrorism.

In contrast to the White House’s dithering, Cameron must support an increase in British troop numbers in Afghanistan with a clear-cut strategy to defeat the Taliban. There also has to be a firm commitment to the future of NATO as the guarantor of transatlantic security. A Cameron government should send an unequivocal signal to Moscow that London will back the further eastward expansion of the organization to include Georgia and Ukraine, and will oppose Russian attempts to intimidate its neighbours in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.

President Obama’s naïve and weak approach to international affairs threatens to usher in the biggest decline of American global power since the days of Jimmy Carter, and has created a distinct leadership vacuum. In contrast, the next British Prime Minister should seek a resurgence of British power, with a foreign policy that projects pride and confidence in Britain’s great and distinguished past, as well as a firm commitment to the transatlantic alliance. David Cameron must reject the folly of the Obama doctrine and follow the example of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in advancing real international leadership.

Nile Gardiner is the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC